San Onofre Unit 2 and 3 are both down today (1/31/2012) and yet we still have plenty of power without this nuclear plant running. Unit 2 is shut down for maintenance and Unit 3 is shut down after a possible leak. Tell me again why we are risking our lives, the environment and the future of California for energy we obviously can live without?

In the San Clemente Patch February 1, 2012 article below, Edison mislead the public, stating there was no radiation leak into the atmosphere. The Edison January 31, 2012 press release said the same thing and Edison’s Gil Alexander said the same thing February 1st in this KPBS midday interview.

Edison did not admit to the leaks into the environment for over 17 days. Edison issued a press release February 17, 2012 admitting to the radiation leaks into the atmosphere. They provided these numbers in the press release, but since they never really measured the release, this is only an “estimate”. Hiding for 17 days that there were radioactive leaks into the atmosphere does not build trust. Why would anyone trust Southern California Edison to tell the truth or to competently manage a nuclear facilities?

The radioactivity released to atmosphere during the steam generator tube leak was barely measurable – 4E-5 millirems or 0.00004 millirems — which is 200 times less than you would receive by having a smoke detector in your home for a year. This updates our initial estimate of 7E-7 millirems or 0.0000007 millirems that we provided to the NRC.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station shut down its Unit 3 Tuesday afternoon because sensors detected a leak in the unit’s steam generator tubes.

“The potential leak poses no imminent danger to the public or plant workers,” according to a Southern California Edison statement. “There has been no release to the atmosphere.”

San Onofre spokesman Gil Alexander said sensors tripped this afternoon, showing mildly radioactive water was leaking from one of two water systems in the steam generator apparatus of Unit 3….

Alexander said it is the system with the contaminated water that shows evidence of leaking. All leakage is contained within the thick concrete containment dome, he said.

The plant is set to shut itself down at the first sign of problems, that plunged Southern California into darkness in September.

But this leak was minor enough that it did not trigger the automatic shutdown of the unit; plant workers initiated it manually as a precaution at 5:31 p.m. Tuesday, Alexander said.

Alexander said Tuesday night that the dome is closed off and technicians are cooling down the reactor, a process that takes about 12 hours. After the cool-down, a crew will enter the dome, assess the leak and take steps to begin repairing it.

Unit 2 is currently offline for a planned maintenance, refueling and technology upgrade outage.

SCE has ample reserve power to meet customer needs while Unit 3 is offline, according to a company spokesman, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was immediately informed of the shutdown.

New 640-ton steam generators were installed in 2010 in the north dome and the ones in the south dome were replaced in 2009 as part of a .